This One's On Me
by Nyah
Summary: During the Rhodes summit, Sookie finds herself quite in need of a drink. She talks shop with a fellow blonde and finds a kindred spirit and then some.


**Disclaimer:** Neither Buffy nor SVN is mine.

**Characters:** Sookie, Buffy (mentions of: Bill, Eric, Angel, and Spike)

**Timeline: Book 7, Rhodes Summit, post-Dr. Pepper Bomb**

**Note: **My last one-shot pertaining to the Support Stacie Auction. Thanks to everyone who participated! My wonderful beta, nycsnowbird, came out on top on my ticket. Congrats! A few other bidders were interested in a little SVN/Buffy interaction. So, in thanks, I give you all ...

**This One's On Me**

I had it on good authority that the bar in the lobby served alcohol at all hours. So what if it was almost 5am? It was still dark out, right? I figure it's one of those hours you call like an ace, high or low. So it was late 5am not early 5am and to hell with what anyone else thought.

For all my resolve, I was kind of relieved to see that I wasn't alone at the bar.

The other occupant looked up at me and smiled (one of those tight, obligatory smiles) over the umbrella of her half-empty drink. I stamped down hard on the part of me that immediately rose up to scold the woman for having a drink at the crack of dawn. _She's just like you_, I reminded myself. _Human!_

I laughed silently. It used to be that you said someone was "human" like that as a way of saying, "we all have faults." Now you just might say it as a way to pick someone out of a crowd. "Oh yeah, he was about 5'10", brown eyes and human."

When I looked back at the woman, she waved me over, bangles clacking on her wrist. "As someone who really needed a drink at 5am, I think "I'm allowed to say you look like you really need at drink at 5am," she said in an authoritative way that had me thinking I'd have ended up with a drink even if I hadn't wanted one in the first place.

"It's been kind of a long night," I admitted, and took the opposite seat at her table for two.

"Oh, you have no idea," the woman said, rolling her eyes down to look at her drink before stabbing at it with her straw.

I'm not usually one to run my mouth, or make a show of my own problems, but I was running on very little sleep. Plus, the woman had a mess of jumbled thoughts about vampires and humans and the summit running around in her head. I guess part of me just wanted to make it clear that I had a little more on my plate than some dime-a-dozen fangbanger.

So I shrugged and sighed. "About an hour ago I was holding a bomb I picked up because I thought it was a piece of litter."

"Oooh," The woman said, drawing out the vowel in appreciation. "You _do _win round one. What's your drink?"

Almost before I knew it, I was staring at a champagne cocktail and the business end of a straw.

"So what brings you here? You know, other than bomb retrieval? Um …?"

"Sookie," I supplied.

The woman pulled an amused face followed by, _dammit, take it back!_ Then she offered, "Buffy," with a self-deprecating smile.

"I, um, I work for some vampires from Louisiana," I said, then added, "sometimes. And maybe not anymore after tonight. And you?"

Buffy smiled that tight smile again. "I used to work with vampires, too. Only when I say 'work' I mean 'slay.' All the time. But not so much anymore since the whole, 'they have rights' thing. Some of the 'royalty' asked me to come, did a little 'let's all get along song and dance.'"

I took a healthy sip of my cocktail. "Wow, that's ...." Maybe good manners pretty much failed me there. So I tried, "Quite a job."

"Yeah," Buffy agreed. "It was a calling. Thing." She waved her fingers in a way that said she didn't really want to go into details. It was fine, I was getting enough details from her thoughts. "So, how's working for vamps? Again, other than the bomb retrieval part."

"It has its ups and downs," I said," Giving my drink a thoughtful stir. "They can be, you know, really ...."

"Bloodthirsty and evil?"

"I was gonna go with strange. And scary too, sometimes." I said. "But there's things about me that make them easier to deal with than regular humans too."

"Part demon?" Buffy guessed. "Vacationing from some hell dimension?"

"No," I said, kind of unsettled, since her thoughts seemed to indicate that she was serious. "I just .... Sometimes I find them easier to get along with."

Buffy made another face, then mentally scolded herself again. "Pot. Kettle," she said by way of apology, gesturing to herself, and then to me. "I shouldn't make faces, I've dated a few vamps." _If you could call it 'dating.'_

"Same," I replied.

"My first vampire boyfriend was a really nice guy," Buffy said in a voice too sweet to last. "Then we … you know … and he lost his soul and tried to kill everyone I loved. So I had to kill him and send him to Hell."

"Okay!" I said, as brightly as possible. "You win that one." At my wave, the bartender whipped up a second round for both of us. "My first boyfriend left me for his Maker."

"Yeah, they're really attached to their sires. What's with that?" Buffy said. "My second vampire boyfriend," Buffy began, crunching a piece of ice, "well I shouldn't have gotten involved with him in the first place but I was having some personal issues …. Anyway, I broke up with him and he tried to rape me."

The feisty, sarcastic wind seemed to go right out of Buffy's sails, and I found myself saying, "Been there. Except there was no 'tried' about it."

"Oh God, I'm sorry," Buffy said, taking my hand across the table. "This was your second boyfriend?"

"No," I said, "The first. He was kind of starving. At the time."

Buffy cocked her head to the side, "Not to be insensitive, but I think that trumps the thing with his sire."

"Yeah," I said, really putting the two side-by-side for the first time. "I guess I try not to think about it."

"My guy," Buffy said, definitely trying to distract me. "The second one, he didn't even have the courtesy to just disappear and let me hate him. He had to go and get himself a soul and go all weird and noble. So then I had to try to figure out what to do with him and kind of admit that I'd really treated him like shit .... Which _totally _doesn't justify the whole 'tried to rape me' thing."

"Not at all," I agreed. "My second one lost his memory and got all sweet and fell in love with me. Then he got his memory back but only the old one so he ...."

"Forgot all about you?"

"I wish," I said, half-heartedly. "He forgot to be sweet, anyway."

"Ouch," Buffy said sympathetically. "Sure it was a memory thing and not a soul thing?

"The vamps I know seem to be pretty much agnostic on the whole soul issue." I shrugged to say I hadn't given it too much thought. "And right before the whole bomb thing, he saved me from this other really creepy vampire. But he saved me by making this, I dunno, blood bond with me, and now I'm connected to him for the next, oh, _eternity, _I guess."

"That's intense," Buffy said, and we clinked our glasses to the assessment. "And vamps probably don't go for divorce."

I laughed. "I think I'm still allowed to hate him though, morally speaking. But the bond's making it kind of hard." I could see the bottom of my second cocktail. It might have gone to my head a little. "Mostly, it's making me really miss getting to see him naked."

"Why do they all have to look like underwear models?" Buffy said, giving a dramatic wail and not laughing at all at the tidbit I'd divulged. "I mean if they looked appropriately disgusting, my life would be so much easier."

"Yes!" I agreed with way too much enthusiasm.

"So, I guess I don't even have to ask if yours were both lookers."

I shook my head. "They're here actually. The first guy, he's the one selling the computer program they're all going nuts about. The other one is a sheriff. I don't know if you went to the wedding today but he was the priest ...."

Buffy's eyes went wide. "_Him?_ The big one. With the hair? And the face? And the general _big_ness?"

I nodded.

"You're upset because you're stuck with _him_ for eternity?"

I started and stopped a few sentences, fully aware that I was losing my footing.

"Soul or no soul," Buffy whistled. "Sookie, girl, you are buying my next drink."


End file.
